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Between 2006 and 2011, as housing prices soared and developers built more than 10,000 condos, the number of families with children in Vancouver increased by only 100.

Pressured by high land prices and council policies that didn’t recognize the need for family-oriented housing, developers built smaller and smaller units to maximize their returns.

According to Statistics Canada, the percentage of families living in Vancouver dropped from 35 per cent in 2006 to 33 per cent in 2011 — the lowest percentage since 1991.

And the problem has only grown worse.

Families are finding themselves increasingly on the outs, and many are moving to the suburbs in search of affordable homes or settling for crowded conditions in small apartments.

The result can be seen in declining school enrolment which is pressuring the school district to close schools.

And for those families that stay in Vancouver, an estimated 8,100 live crammed into studio, one- or two-bedroom apartments because there is nowhere else to go, according to a city report to council.

Less than one per cent of the city’s rental stock in 2013 was three bedrooms or more, and between 2012 and 2014 just 21 of 2,163 secured market rental units built were three bedrooms or more.

Now Vancouver is looking at ways to turn the tide.

In a signal that it considers its single-family districts as the next target for densification, the city wants to begin producing large numbers of ground-level townhouses, stacked townhouses and rowhouses. On Tuesday, the city’s directors of housing and planning said they will begin a city-wide search of all neighbourhoods that can take these under-utilized but desired forms of family housing.

Townhouses and rowhouses represent just three per cent of Vancouver’s housing stock. By comparison, low-rise apartments account for 33 per cent, highrise towers 27 per cent; semi-detached, duplex and houses with suites, 19 per cent; and single-family homes, 18 per cent. That, despite recent city efforts to encourage lane houses and three-bedroom units in bonus density programs offered to developers.

The city has already identified the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood and Phase 3 of the Cambie Corridor plan as having the potential for increased density, according to Brian Jackson, the planning director. The Cambie plan would see adjacent areas of single-family housing rezoned for townhouses and rowhouses.

“Certainly the message through Cambie (Phase 3) is that we are all on board in terms of the plan being all about family-oriented, grade-related housing,” Jackson said. “That is a significant area where we can achieve the housing objectives.”

Mukhtar Latif, the housing director, told council he wants a “city-wide family housing rezoning policy” that looks at higher density in “ground-oriented family housing” in single-family districts, close to schools, parks, community and recreation centres, and along arterial roads served by transit.

Those words set off a flurry of questions at Tuesday’s council meeting over whether the city was about to rezone vast areas of single-family housing for townhouses and rowhouses. Both Latif and Jackson said no.

“What we are looking to understand is where these areas are, how we are going to accommodate the kind of housing we are looking to provide, and then work with those communities to see how we can bring forward some pilot programs,” Latif told reporters. “The intent at the moment is to look at how we can encourage the different housing types to be built across the city.”

Jackson was more direct. “There are no grand plans when it comes to put this in as an overlay across the city or even in specific neighbourhoods,” he said. “We are not proposing a city-wide policy right now.”

Jackson said the city is wary of touching off a speculation frenzy in the neighbourhoods and is already grappling with that problem on the Cambie corridor.

“The speculators and the real estate agents are going in there and bidding up housing prices with land assemblies,” he said. “We have to be very careful ensuring that if we are identifying areas that are appropriate for family-oriented housing that we not do it in a way that allows that speculation to occur, which then makes it impossible or difficult to achieve our housing objectives.

In addition to the plan to target single-family districts for townhouses and rowhouses, the city is looking at other options to encourage family housing, including:

• requiring 35 per cent family-oriented units, up from 25 per cent, in all future condo rezonings, including a minimum of 10 per cent to be three-bedrooms or more;

• For social housing projects, require 50 per cent to be family-oriented, with 20 per cent three bedrooms or more;

• Possible “entry-level home ownership models to support families”;

• Requiring up to five per cent of market rental units to be three bedrooms.

The city recently changed its rental incentive policies to include three-bedroom units towards developer density bonus programs. Until recently it only applied to studio, one- and two-bedroom rental units.

Latif and Jackson will come back to council in the fall with the results of consultations with neighbourhood groups and the development community.

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Alienated families spur hard look at Vancouver housing

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